Actually, I don’t have to get a bell. You can’t see my bell in the photo of the Blue Beauty (BB?), but I have a bell the size of a small apple mounted on my handlebars. When I ring it, the bell makes a bing-bong-bing sound. It’s only supposed to go ‘bing-bong’ but something about how I ring it adds an extra ‘bing’. It’s not the bell that came with my bike, either; that bell met an untimely end when it loosened, fell off and cracked on the pavement. When I went to replace it, all the traditional bells were sold out because new Ontario safety laws mean a pricey ticket if a cop catches you without a bell. Apparently parents all over town swooped into the stores and bought the traditional bells, the small bells, the cheap bells — all the bells except for the church-sized bing-bong bell that I ended up with.

That’s fine by me. I needed a bell and I’m not concerned about heft or size. The Blue Beauty is heavy, at about 40 pounds — all steel and powder paint, heavy rims and rack… I’m not concerned about lightening the load by getting the smallest possible alloy-this-n-that.

Anyway, the point I’m gettign to is that I use my bell *a lot* and people often remark on it as I ring it in order to navigate a crowded campus with paths being used by multitudes of only partly attentive pedestrians and other cyclists. Oddly, the cheery sound of the bell alerts folks to the need to stop wandering in the middle of the driveways, and roadways that criss-cross the two campuses in town, and they good-naturedly move to the side.

So, when I was last riding home I rang my bell as I approached a gaggle of meandering girls, and as I passed them I overheard one say, “What a cute bell. You know… I REALLY have to get a bell for my bike.”